


Determination of Safety

by dragonashes



Series: Quintessence: Undertale One-shots [6]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Big Brother Sans, Gen, Papyrus and Spaghetti, Spoilers - Undertale Neutral Route, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 06:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8787010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonashes/pseuds/dragonashes
Summary: Papyrus has finally captured a human!  Surely, this is the greatest day of his life!
...At least, until the human turns up missing and some uncomfortable truths are revealed.





	

**Author's Note:**

> What if the Ruins were the only safe place in the Underground that Frisk knows about? What could drive her to try to go back? How would she feel about Toriel asking her to never return?
> 
> Set after a lost Papyrus fight.

“SANS!”

“what’s up, bro?”

“I CAN’T FIND THE HUMAN!”

“wha…?”

Sans rolled off the couch.  The human...Papyrus had just captured the kid, hadn’t he?  What could possibly have happened?

“SANS!”

He followed his brother’s voice outside.  Papyrus was visible just inside the shed’s open doorway, pacing back and forth.  Behind him was a set of bars far too wide to catch anything smaller than Asgore himself.  On the other side was a bowl of dog food; thankfully for the kid’s health, it was untouched.

“SA-oh, there you are.  The human is gone!”

“i, uh, see that, paps.”  Sans let the door close behind him gently.  It had a tendency to stick during Snowdin’s brief warm spells, and it had been unseasonably warm lately.  “kid’s so small, she probably slipped right through the bars.”

“I KNOW!  I thought humans were MUCH larger!  Undyne is always talking about how strong and terrifying humans are...I never thought they could be so SMALL!”

“eh, bad luck, buddy.”  He turned to leave.

“NO!  WE CAN’T JUST LET THE HUMAN ROAM AROUND!  WHAT IF SHE GETS HURT?  WHAT IF SHE GETS COLD?  WHAT IF…”  Papyrus paused dramatically, “SHE GETS HUNGRY???”

“good point.  we should…”

“SANS?  WHAT IS IT?  YOU TRAILED OFF STRANGELY THERE.”

“um...paps?  i think you should, uh, see this.”

“WHAT?  ...Oh.”

Sans stepped aside so his brother could get a better look at the door.  Across the wooden surface, from about Sans’s waist height down to the floor, were marks in sets of three and four.  Sans ran his hand over the door, remembering the size of the kid’s hand in his own.  The marks...they matched up.  Scratches.  He knelt down, examining the area around the bottom of the door where the marks were the thickest, and felt his soul lurch when he saw half-dried rusty red streaks.

“paps...did you close the door on the kid?”

“I...I did.  I thought...she’s very strong, you know.  I thought she’d be fine…”

“just because humans have strong souls doesn’t always mean they have strong bodies.  they’re not...not like us.”

“I didn’t know.  I didn’t think she’d try to get out.  I left a note, asking her to stay put.  I just wanted her to be safe until Undyne could come collect-”

“oh, paps.  no.”

“...What do you mean?”

Sans took a deep breath.  “so...i guess undyne never told you what the royal guard does with humans, huh.”

“...Take them to the Capitol?”

“after that.”

“...Take them to Asgore?”

“and what do you think asgore does to them?”

“He, uh, gives them...tea?  And asks for their help to break the barrier?”

“nope.”

“Oh.”  Papyrus was quiet for a long time, looking at the claw marks of a desperate human child.

Sans felt bad - he’d never wanted to break his little brother’s delusions - but a part of him knew that it wouldn’t matter.  A human with that much DETERMINATION would probably cause an anomaly in the timeline.  In all likelihood, she could reset on a whim.  He’d probably had this conversation a hundred times already.

“He...the king...he takes their souls, doesn’t he?  That’s how we got the six human souls.”

“yeah, bro.”

“It hurts them, doesn’t it.”

“yeah, bro.”

“Why...why didn’t anyone tell me?  You, Undyne, the dogs...why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“gosh, paps.  we...we didn’t want to destroy your dream.”

“My dream...you mean being a Very Famous Royal Guardsman, don’t you?  But...but Royal Guards...they help Asgore...they help collect souls, don’t they?”

Sans sighed.  “you’re too good for this place, y’know?  and then you said you wanted to be in the royal guard.  if you weren’t as strong as you are, well, that would be easy, wouldn’t it?  and you weren’t, at first.  but you kept training and training, becoming almost as strong as undyne.  she couldn’t keep giving you excuses when you were stronger than half the guard.  and if she told you that all that work was going to go to waste?  that it was all to get a job that you wouldn’t like in the first place?  well...no one wanted to do that.”

“I just...I wish someone had told me.  I should have realized.  I...I really am as stupid as Dad always said I was-”

“D O N ‘ T .”

“-aren’t I?  Sans?  What’s...what’s wrong?”

Sans felt like his bones were frozen together.  He hadn’t heard Papyrus so much as reference their father in passing since The Accident.  The thought that his baby brother still remembered their father - remembered the threats, the insults, the _experiments_ \- it was too much to process.

So Sans did what he did best: he ignored it.

“...Sans?  Your magic is doing funny things and I’m not sure that’s safe to do in such a small area and-”

“heh.  sorry, paps.  that better?”

“...Yes.  Though that’s a bit scary that you can give off that much magic...and then turn it off on a whim…”

“sorry.  say, we’d better find the kid, huh?”

“RIGHT!  FEAR NOT, BROTHER!  I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, SHALL FIND THE HUMAN BEFORE ANY HARM BEFALLS HER!  I SHALL NOT REST UNTIL SHE IS SAFE IN THE CAPTURE ZONE ONCE MORE!  ...AND MY BROTHER HAS DISAPPEARED ON ME!  AGAIN!  CURSE THESE TIME-SPACE SHENANIGANS!”

On the roof of the shed, Sans suppressed a chuckle.  He didn’t see the kid, but...ah, there.  Footprints.

He took another shortcut into the forest, careful to stay out of sight.  As one of the few people in the Underground with real, factual knowledge of humans, he was all too aware of the danger of an unstable human.

He didn’t see any dust - thank the stars for small miracles - but the kid’s footsteps were staggering in circles.  She hadn’t been gone all that long but she was making good time for someone so small.  He wished he knew where she was heading; then he could just take a shortcut there.

_...actually, where WOULD a scared kid go if she thought everyone was out to get her?_

Probably not anywhere in Snowdin, really.  The monsters were friendly, sure, but not overly welcoming to outsiders.  But…

...But the kid had come from the Ruins.  Sans had disabled Alphys’s camera at the entrance to the Ruins years ago to keep his conversations with his joke partner private.  That meant he couldn’t use Papyrus’s computer to hack into the security system and check.

Instead, Sans took a shortcut to his favorite human-watching post - the one by the now-broken branch on the path - and ran the rest of the way to the Ruins.  Sure enough, the kid was almost to the door, shivering and crying.  He snuck through the bushes until he was close enough to hear…

“S-sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so, sorry Mom…”

_...what?_

The kid crumpled into a ball next to the door.  “I should never have left, Mom.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...and I _know_ you told me never to come back; I _do_ understand, I promise, but...but I don’t think I’m DETERMINED enough to do this just yet.”  She took a deep breath.  “I won’t bother you, I promise;  I won’t even ask to c-come inside, even though it’s c-cold, but...but please?  Won’t you say something?  Mom?  P-please?  I’m scared...I’m scared...I’m _scared_ …”

Sans sighed and left his hiding place under the bush, taking care to make enough noise to be heard.  Sure enough, the kid tensed when she heard him coming.  She tried to dry her tears and the weird gunk dripping from her nose on her sleeve.

“that’s pretty gross, kid.  here.”  He pulled out a crumpled wad of tissue from his pocket and handed it to her.  She obligingly dried herself off on the soft paper and handed it back.

Sans shuddered at the feeling of thin, wet paper between his phalanges.  Ugh...and Papyrus called _him_ slimey…

“Thanks.”  She smiled up at him, and he felt something warm in his soul.  It was like when Papyrus smiled.  He felt himself smiling back - for real, and not just because his mouth was shaped that way.

“eh, no problem kid.  so...i couldn’t help but overhear.  your mom lives in there?”  The only person in the Ruins Sans had ever talked to was the joke lady.  He didn’t know much about her...but she _had_ made him promise to protect any human who got past the door.

“Y-yeah.  Well...she said I could call her Mom.  I didn’t...didn’t even know her that long, but she was...just…so _nice_.  She showed me all about the Ruins, and she gave me hugs, and she made me p-pie...and she protected m-me…”

The kid started crying again, so Sans gave her back the wet tissue.  She dried herself back off as best she could, then held it out to him.  “um...why don’t you keep it?  seems like you need it more than i do.”

She crumpled it into a ball in her hand.

“and, uh...listen.  i-i’m sorry.  i should’ve remembered that the shed door sticks sometimes.  i didn’t realize you’d be trapped there.”

“But…Papyrus was trying to trap me.  Wasn’t he?”

“well...yeah.  y’see, the thing about papyrus is that he always thinks the best of people.  monsters, humans, fictional characters...he always believes in the good in everyone.  what i’m trying to say is that he didn’t even think that the royal guard, or undyne, or asgore would really hurt you.  it never crossed his mind.”

“What?  Really?”

“i asked him before i came to find you, and apparently he thought asgore would just sit you down and feed you tea.”

The kid giggled.  “Tea?  Why tea?”

“dunno.  guy likes the stuff, i guess.  he feeds it to every monster he comes across.  with cookies, if he’s feeling adventurous.”

“But...not humans?”

“kid...did your, uh, mom tell you anything about us?  about why we’re trapped down here?”

“Not really.  She just said that Asgore would kill me if I left the Ruins.  What does that have to do with the other monsters?”

“just...listen, okay?  sheesh, always thought undyne would give this talk.  she sure practices it enough.  okay.  so, a long time ago, humans and monsters lived on the surface together.  about two hundred years ago, humans and monsters fought each other because both sides were afraid of each other...for various reasons.

“the humans won, and they stuck us down here.  seven powerful humans put up a magic barrier to keep us here, so none of us can leave.

“now, we’ve studied the barrier...like, a _lot_.  there’s a lot of theories about what could possibly break the barrier, but the one thing we know for sure that would work is the power of seven human souls.”

The kid sniffed, drying her nose on the now-soaked tissue.  “Let me guess: I’m the seventh human.”

“well...eighth, if you want to get technical, but yeah.  king asgore has collected six human souls.”

“Six...so that’s why Mom was so sad.”

“whaddaya mean?”

“She said - right before I left - that she was just trying to keep me safe.  She said that...that she couldn’t even k-keep one child safe.  I...I just _left_ her…”

“hey, hey, kid...look, I don’t know the whole story, but it sounds like you weren’t trying to hurt your mom, right?”

“Right…”

“and if you could, you’d make her happy, right?”

“Right.”

“so chin up, eh?  you came out here for a reason.  i have my suspicions, but you can keep that bit to yourself, okay?  just keep focused, do what you gotta do, and stay determined.  who knows?  maybe you’ll see her again.”

“R-really?”

“sure!  why not?  the underground’s a small place.  i mean, no one enters or leaves the ruins - _ever_ \- but _you_ came out of the ruins.  anything’s possible!”

The kid smiled, then laughed.

“h-hey!  i haven’t even started with the jokes!  if i said something pun-intentionally funny, you’ve gotta throw me a bone-”

She did.  Or, rather, she threw her whole skeleton at him.  Sans barely had time to brace himself for the impact.

“Thanks, Sans,” she said.

“no problem…”  He was going to respond with her name, but realized, “hey, i never caught your name.  i, heh, i guess i can’t just keep calling you ‘kid,’ huh?”

She pulled away and leaned back against the door.  “F-frisk.”

“frisk?”

“That’s my name.  Frisk.”

“oh!  hey!  i mean, it’s not freestyle, but it’s a cool name nonetheless.”

“Freestyle?  What does that mean?”

“oh, it’s, uh, it’s a skeleton thing.  we’re named after fonts.  like, computer fonts?  my great-aunt on my mother’s side was named freestyle.  wacky lady.  paps takes after her.”

“That’s...pretty cool, actually.”  She looked like she wanted to say more, but was interrupted by a hiccup and a sneeze in rapid succession.

“heeey...why don’t we get you somewhere warm?”

The kid - Frisk - shivered.  “I...I really, really don’t want to go back into the shed...please?  Please don’t make me go back in there?”

“i won’t, i won’t.  c’mere, kid.  i gotcha.  why don’t i take you back to my place?  paps would be happy to see that you’re safe.  he was almost more scared than i was when you went missing.”

Frisk looked like she wanted to refuse, like she wanted to sit by this door - the last link she had to her ‘Mom’ - until she froze solid.  Sans was preparing to physically drag her away when she stepped forward and buried her face back into his jacket.  Sans pointedly ignored the nose gunk getting onto his hood.  He’d wash it later...or, at least, leave it on the ground someplace where Paps would find it and stick it in the wash.  He wrapped his arms around Frisk’s shoulders - almost as bony as his, he noted with concern - and teleported them straight to his living room.

Almost immediately, Frisk jumped back.  Luckily, she jumped right onto the couch.  “W-what...what?  How?  What was that?”

“just a shortcut.  hey, do you mind spaghetti?”

“Shortcut?  Did we just...just _bloop_ right from the Ruins to...where are we?  Is this...”

“AHA!  WELCOME, HUMAN, TO SCENIC...MY HOUSE!”

“AAAAH!”  Screamed Frisk, not expecting the yelling right in her ear.  Papyrus joined in after a moment, surprised by the sudden screaming.

Sans waited for them to finish.

“so...paps, this is frisk the human.  frisk, you’ve already been introduced to my brother, papyrus the skeleton.”

“IT’S GREAT TO MEET YOU, HUMAN FRISK!  I WAS WORRIED THAT YOU HAD BECOME A _SNOW-_ HU _MAN_!”

Sans snorted.  Frisk giggled a little.  “I-I’m fine now, Papyrus.  I was just...really, really scared in the shed.”

Papyrus wilted visibly.  “I am sorry, Human Frisk.  I did not intend to distress you.  I also did not intend to assist in the dastardly plan to steal your soul.  I did not realize that such a thing was going to happen.  BUT!  I am sure if you meet the other Royal Guards, and Undyne, and Asgore, that they will all be your friends, too!”

“Are...we friends again, Papyrus?”

“OF C...oh.”

Sans watched his brother.  He wasn’t sure what had happened - Papyrus was quick to declare friendship with anyone and everyone - so his hesitation was worrying.

Frisk sniffed.  “Because you said we c-couldn’t be friends, since I’m human…”

Papyrus stood up tall, straightened his shoulders, and dragged Frisk into a hug.  Her feet dangled.  “Human Frisk...I am sorry.  It is not often that the Great Papyrus is wrong, but it was _very_ wrong of me to say that I could not be friends with you.  It will be a challenge, but no challenge is too GREAT or too small for me!  Will... _can_ you forgive me?”

Frisk wrapped both arms around Papyrus’s shoulders and both legs around his spine.  “I...I forgive you, Papyrus.  Thanks for being my friend.”

“NYEH-HEH-HEH!  SANS, DID YOU HEAR!  I MADE MY FIRST HUMAN FRIEND!”

“pretty cool, paps.”

“WE NEED TO FIND YOU A HUMAN FRIEND AS WELL!”

“nah, that’s…”

Frisk pulled herself up and smiled at Sans over Papyrus’s shoulder.  “It’s okay, I’m friends with Sans too.  He’s...he helped me out a lot.”

“YOU ARE FRIENDS WITH BOTH OF US???  THAT’S AMAZING!!  THIS CALLS FOR A CELEBRATION!”

“papyrus, no…”

“PAPYRUS, YES!   SPAGHETTI TIME!”

Papyrus tossed Frisk back onto the couch and heaved Sans up beside her.  Sans watched his brother disappear into the kitchen, eye sockets narrowed in dread.  “kid...i’m so sorry.  if things get bad, i’ll hold him off and you can make a break for waterfall.”

Frisk giggled into her sleeves.

“oh, you think i’m kidding, do ya?”  He wiggled his fingers in the direction of her stomach, which only made her laugh harder.

She wasn’t laughing when Papyrus called them to the table, bedecked with plates of soggy noodles and pungent sauce.  “HUMAN!  BROTHER!  BEHOLD MY BEST SPAGHETTI YET!”

“g-great job, bro.”  Sans was grateful that his biology lacked taste buds.  Was that...glitter on top?

The kid - to her credit - didn’t react to the spaghetti.  At all.  Her eyes were forced into thin slits and her mouth was drawn in a neutral line.  She looked...DETERMINED.

With the air of one about to engage in battle, Frisk grabbed her fork, twirled a few noodles around it, and stabbed a meatball.  Her mouth opened wider than Sans thought possible and the food disappeared into it.  The fork dropped to the table a moment later.

Papyrus and Sans both watched with bated breath, for very different reasons.

_sorry, lady, i think i got your kid poisoned by poorly cooked pasta..._

She swallowed.  She breathed out, hard, through her nose.  Then...she beamed at Papyrus, giving him two thumbs up.

“SANS!  SANS!  THE HUMAN LIKES MY SPAGHETTI!”

The kid had tears in the corners of her eyes.

“yeah!  great job, paps!”

Sans polished off his plate, shooting worried glances at Frisk periodically.  She wolfed down her food faster than anyone he’d ever seen who wasn’t actually a wolf, but she seemed...surprisingly okay.  It was a little terrifying.

There were, it seemed, no limits to a human’s DETERMINATION.

That was good.  She’d need it.  Not everyone was as nice as Papyrus...

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! There's lots of interesting bits of canon surrounding the Papyrus fight. I recommend Zarla's reminiscences on the topic, found on Deviantart, LiveJournal, and Tumblr. Her notes on Undertale (and her comics) are amazing.
> 
> "Determination of Safety" is one of many stories I've written for Undertale. If you enjoyed, please follow the series "Quintessence: Undertale One-shots" or my author profile. I post on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I also have some longer stories I've been working on, if that tickles your fancy.


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